Month: July 2018

A holiday with friends to the Black Sea coast in the last week of july, my main focus – spending time with beloved girlfriend and friends… But I hoped I’d find time to see some brand new Caspian gulls. I basically got away with a few mornings and an afternoon of standing around throwing bread and looking deranged and attracting attention from gangs of drunken Romanian teenagers.

Between Mamaia, Constanta and Vadu I saw plenty, there are many more photos than this but i thought i’d just give a range. Some individuals were incredible, some were abit up and down in terms of looks but but all show how variable they can be. The most constant features were expression, finer fringing to scapulars and coverts, finely patterned greater coverts (with a few execptions) nice dark thumbnail tertials and lightly barred or pure white axilleries, even on most of the darker birds, scroll down and enjoy.

Above, juvenile Yellow-Legged Gull, ringed at Constanta harbour. these birds were generally alot darker with more broad notching to the greater coverts and broader fringing to scapulars etc.

Below are some Adult Caspian Gulls from Vadu beach, most showed a yellowish tinge to the legs but some where dull grey/pink, and a variation in iris tone/darkness

A slight increase in numbers of Yellow-Legged Gulls on the Thames this week, I had 10+ birds today with 7 of them juveniles. Low tide is around mid morning currently the light is abit gross.

I wanted to include the below more distant shot in this post. Once your eye is in, these birds are easily picked up even at distance with the clean white in the upper tail and even the expression, bill and head shape are all recognisable in this pic, other juveniles (Herring and LBB) all still appear to have a short p10 and some look like their learning to fly! Also noted today were a couple of juvenile YLGs today with 2 or 3 replaced scapulars already.

This nice juvenile Mediterranean Gull tentatively tried to get involved in the bread fight.

En-route to visit Laurence P last weekend I called in at Old Lodge, a Sussex Wildlife trust reserve in the Ashdown Forest as I’d heard it had been a good year for Common Redstarts. I saw about 6/7 juvs, but no adults, lovely little birds.

Its something I look forward to from about the end of May – mid summer influx of Yellow-Legged Gulls from the continent and especially the juvenile birds. Despite a gnarly summer cold myself and Dante un-earthed 4 Juvs and 2 second summer birds at Thames Barrier Park earlier on this evening. With the record for the earliest bird on our part of the Thames being the 1st of July (set by RB) these were almost a week late, better late than never.

Two individuals were particularly interested in the bread however the two others made brief appearances only. The below Adult Mediterranean Gull was an added bonus.

I guess you can expect more ylgs over the next month or so but ill try and keep them to a minimum.